


Painted Shut

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [114]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Breathplay, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Girls Kissing, Oral Sex, Other, Panic Attacks, unreality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 08:27:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11204217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: collected Bill-based prompt fills, all hail Bill Potts our queen and savior





	1. Buddy in the Parade

**Author's Note:**

> for anon, who prompted: Other times Twelve attempted to help Bill get a girlfriend.

Earth, 1969. New York City, the friendly local aliens versus the invading force, the two of them in the middle.

The Doctor keeps calling things “groovy.” There’s a protest covering a skirmish covering a last stand, and then all that stands between this city and its destruction is a well-armed group of Black Panthers. Things go down; the earth still stands.

Bill gets swept up. It’s history, yes, it’s powerful and important and - so sue her, there’s a beautiful woman with an outstanding afro who keeps making eye contact with her.

Afterwards, the Doctor motions her over to where they’re skulking in the shadows.

“You go ahead,” they say. “Go soak it all in. I’ll be back in the TARDIS trying to get it unstuck.”

“Right, yeah. See you - I guess later tonight?”

They motion her closer. “Just to be clear. I’m not stepping aside just because I’m white. Or uncomfortable. Or - I’m given to understand I shouldn’t intrude on dates.”

“Date? I’m not on a date.”

“Not yet,” they say, grinning. They squeeze her shoulder, and wave, and flomp off around a street corner.

 

* * *

“Her name is Rk-Alkhe*,” the Doctor says. Sidling up suddenly next to Bill, sucking on the straw inserted into a tiki drink. “She’s here on business, but interested in pleasure. Two pets, no children. Fiercely intelligent, a little bit feisty, deeply uninterested in my masculine charms so. All yours.”

“I don’t need you to set me up. And don’t want you to, also, to clarify.”

The Doctor shrugs, slurping up the last few drops of pina colada. “Fine. I’m just saying.”

She sighs. And keeps sneaking glances at the very green, very beautiful woman across the room. Maybe she will go say hi, anyway. Why not.

 

* * *

They’re a fourth of the way along the interminable trek back to the TARDIS. Across moors, space moors, purple-blue moors because of course those exist, in space.

The Doctor moves more quickly but Bill covers more ground, since she walks like a normal person.

“You make friends easily, don’t you,” the Doctor says from somewhere behind her.

“S'pose so.”

“I like that in a companion. Not great at that, myself. The whole - all of that.”

“We’re your PR, then?”

“Something like that. Did you get her number?”

“I don’t live here. How can I call an alien from Earth?”

“D'you really think, after all you’ve seen, that I’m incapable of enabling roaming on your mobile?”

Bill stops walking, turns around. “Why do you keep doing this.”

“Doing what?” The Doctor keeps going, pulling ahead.

“Wingmanning.” She stands her ground.

“You should have someone,” they call back, still hurtling awkwardly forward. “Someone who loves you the way you deserve to be loved.”

She sighs, and dashes forward, recapturing the lost ground. “I’m holding you to that promise of an all-of-time-and-space phone, okay?”


	2. Sister Cities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anon, who prompted: Bill/Tardis, something with kinky breathplay maybe?

The ride home from Chasm Forge is tense enough, and long enough due to the Doctor’s utter refusal to accept help, that Bill actually takes the standing offer to spend the night (day? generic length of time) in the bedroom she apparently has here.

It looks a lot like her bedroom in Moira’s place. A bit more grown-up, nicer furniture. Fewer piles of clothes on the ground. 

She takes a shower in the en-suite, dresses in the pajamas that she finds laid out on the bed. They’re soft, fuzzy, like flannel but not as heavy and warm. She sits down on the edge of the bed, wriggling her toes inside slightly-too-big socks.

“You listen, don’t you? You can hear me, sort of understand me.” She feels faintly ridiculous, talking to a spaceship.

The spaceship burbles back.

“It’s just that I don’t want to put this on the Doctor, he’s got enough to deal with as it is, he doesn’t need my nonsense. Like even if this was something I’d talk to him about, I wouldn’t, because. You know. The whole - thing. And Nardole is…Nardole.” She shifts, swinging her legs up and under her. The sensation of several pillows being fluffed and propped up against her back; if she turned to confirm, she might freak out, so she stares straight ahead and enjoys the reinforcement as best she can.

“So like. This is total TMI. I’ve never told anyone about this, I mean there was that message board that one time, but. Like. Saying this out loud.” Bill sighs, fidgets at her socks.

“I like - I like the idea of being choked, right? I’ve barely even made out with a girl, let alone gone into deep kink shit. Hypothetical, yeah? It - like I’ve watched porn, I’ve read stories, I’m, uh. Into it.”

The ship warbles in what Bill chooses to interpret as a sympathetic fashion.

“But today. What happened to me, to everyone else. It both kind of ruins it, and like. I’m just afraid, a bit, of whether, you know, in that shitty masturbatory haze, whether I’d - ”

Beep-boop, the ship says. _Go on._

“Like what if I accidentally jill off to fantasies partially inspired by people dying?”

The ship sighs. Bill gets a vague, quick rush of a Feeling, the thought ‘you wouldn’t be the first’ buried in there somewhere. And ‘it’s not your fault/fantasy is not reality’. And the sudden, unwelcome knowledge that Professor “The Doctor” Doctor has, well. She’s doing her best to forget that part.

“Guess it’s a good thing I’m not into being imprisoned, else this would be even more awkward.”

The ship boops in agreement. The room’s ambient temperature drops; blankets appear. It has been a long day, and she is incredibly tired, but _don’t wank in a sentient spaceship_ is warring with _what would it be like to wank in a sentient spaceship._ And it’s awkward.

“Can you do that, actually?” Bill leans forward, plucking a burred bit of fluff off her foot. “Like. I’m not saying that maybe you’re a gigantic vibrator, or a kink-enabler. But you can do pretty much anything, right?” As in, let some of the air out, uncatch some of the hooks in her chest, a bridge between fantasy and awful reality.

The ship beeps, like, _maybe later. Get some sleep._

Bill slides under the covers, draws them up to her chin. “G'night. Or good day. Or - whatever. I’ll stop talking now.”


	3. Fightboat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for evilqueenofgallifrey, who prompted: Bill/Missy, in whatever way tickles your fancy because I'm not fussy

Bill doesn’t know where to start, dealing with this. The thing in the vault being an alien; the alien in the vault having been there for the better part of the century; the alien in the vault for the better part of a century being a genocidal maniac cartoon villain; the cartoon villain being the Doctor’s ex (she’s really not into sexualizing the Doctor, he’s her mentor and pseudo-grandpa, just no); the Doctor’s ex (ugh) being…fit.

Like, absolutely gorgeous. Compelling and charismatic and terrifying. Missy sashays through the vault doors and Bill has never felt gayer. Like, rainbow-firework levels of gay, here. 

“I can sort of see why you’ve been harboring an intergalactic criminal,” Bill says.

“I can hear you, you know,” Missy says, as the Doctor says _It’s complicated_. “I like this one,” Missy continues. “She’s got spunk. And she likes me back - the last one did too, remember? Oh, wait, no, you don’t.”

The Doctor stiffens, then retreats. Missy raises her eyebrows at Bill, a conspiratorial glance. Bill swallows, then follows the Doctor.

 

* * *

“He does this quite a lot, you know. Or, well, I say ‘he’ - Time Lords and gender, it’s a complicated subject.” Missy waves impatiently at Bill, whose job at the moment is to press a button whenever Missy says ‘when’.

She presses the button. “With humans, too.”

“Thete’s never been much of a man. Take that as you will.” Missy solders two wires together while flinching melodramatically; the apparatus does not explode.

Bill exhales, and stares down at her hand resting on the button, and the kill-switch nearby.

“They do tend towards bright young things like yourself,” Missy says, around the screws clenched between her teeth. She spits one out and inserts it into the plate protecting the doomsday device. “Always with so much in common with them. The adventurous spirit, the chronic do-gooding. And the - _appreciation_ , for a quality opponent.” She finishes fixing the device home.

“This isn’t chess. It’s not a friendly rivalry. You’re a monster.” Bill taps her button one last time.

“Well. Yes and no. And yes, but I’m a pretty monster. I worked quite hard on that. And you are thinking about it, aren't’ you.”

“About what.”

“Kissing me,” Missy says, with an over-the-top sultry look. “So go on. I dare you.”

Bill glares, and bites her lower lip, and then lunges forward. What the hell, right?

 

* * *

Missy might be an alien and a monster and a criminal mastermind but she bends so familiarly under Bill’s touch, and the noises she makes aren’t particularly foreign. A hand between her legs, rucking her skirt up as far as it’ll go (not very).

“Can’t believe there are corsets in space,” Bill says, attempting and failing to unlock Missy from her sartorial prison.

“There aren’t normally, but I do enjoy the silhouette,” Missy says, undoing her buttons one by one. And then she’s out, and almost human, half-naked amidst the conquered elaborate contraptions of her clothing. On the mattress, like any other woman might be.

Bill slides her hands up Missy’s stomach, gently squeezes the flesh of her breasts before allowing herself to be pushed down. Head between legs, a familiar-enough cunt. Like a time-cunt, sure, alien strange, but everything just about where she’d expect it to be.

A monster and a criminal and a villain writhing above her. Does this make her somehow complicit? She is not thinking about how the Doctor’s probably been here too, because that’s weird and gross and wrong and she won’t - but she is here, now, breathing out onto Missy’s inner thigh, trailing up, hands cupped around Missy’s arse and her tongue on her clit. Listening to the noises Missy makes, theatrical but nearly genuine.

“Score 1/0, points to you,” Missy gasps out, her hand tangled in Bill’s hair. “Thete gets lost around my knees, you at least know where to go.”

“Shut it,” Bill says. “Stop talking.”

“Yes ma'am,” Missy replies. Hands above her head, faux-submissive.

Bill rolls her eyes and dives back in.


	4. Girls Club

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anon, who prompted: bill/TARDIS with a healthy side of tardis nyarlathotep pretty please

It’s just for a split second, the tiniest of flashes, but Bill’s pretty sure she just stared directly into the face of God. Or into the Matrix, or - something.

“Stop talking,” she says, voice coming out funny, muffled.

The Doctor breaks off from their second-best impersonation of a tour bus guide. “For how long?”

“Until after I stop talking. It’s called a conversation. What. Was _that?_ ”

The Doctor stares at her blankly; she nods at them to go ahead. “What was what?”

“That thing that just happened.”

“Many things just - ”

“No. Okay. It was like - right then, very briefly, I saw the universe. And not ‘oh everything’s the Universe, Bill, har har har’. Like, _through_ it, or into it, or something. And I want to say, as an aside, I’m mildly uncomfortable with the amount of existential crises I go through whenever we hang out.” She breathes in deeply.

The Doctor tilts their head to the side, staring off into space. Bill can’t shake the feeling they’re somehow looking directly backwards in time.

“Ah,” they say, walking towards the center console and patting the buttons affectionately. “The perception filter. Everything seems to be in working order - well, comparatively speaking - although I suppose - ”

The static in Bill’s head threatens to spill over again. She digs her fingernails into her palms, tries to remember how to do the mindful-thinking thing.

“But I think she just wanted to say Hi,” the Doctor says cheerfully. They wave at her. “Hi, Bill.”

“Hiya.” She waves weakly back.

“The TARDIS,” they say, in their Lecture Voice, “is, like myself and many other objects of semi-Gallifreyan origin, a system that chooses to present a physical form. She exists, this is real - ” They rap their knuckles on the console. “But underneath, things are, uh. Different.”

“You don’t understand how it works either, do you.” She hesitantly moves closer to the console, looking up at the spinning lights.

“No. Well, yes, but I don’t have the words for it. I think I might have done, once. Now all I have…” They trail off, leaning heavily against the console. Miles and miles away.

Bill clears her throat. “Should I give you two some alone time?”

The Doctor starts, snaps out of it. One of those funny crooked grins that she doesn’t know the meaning of, though she’s certain it’s something kind.

“That’s my line,” they say, eyebrows waggling.

“Sorry?”

They gesture broadly towards the spinny-light things. “She essentially just. Gave you her number.”

“She flashed me,” Bill mumbles, the static building up again.

“In a sense, yes. Which, come to think of it, is terribly rude.” They flick a lever reproachfully. “Boundaries, hey?”

Something in Bill’s head turns over, and then everything is fine. Disassociation is, generally speaking, not an ideal coping mechanism, but considering she’s everywhere and nowhere in space and time with a professor-shaped alien inside a police-box-shaped ship-thing, she’ll take what she can get. Reality is an illusion, time is an artificial construct, the ship wants to fuck her. Okay.

“Okay,” she says distantly.

“Anyway. Where was I? Right! Athena Station, good place to catch a supernova, but more importantly it’s got a fantastic little shop - ”

Thus the nattering-on begins. Bill sits down gingerly, smiling politely when the ship beep-boops happily at her.


	5. What's the Difference?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anon, who prompted: the world is a simulation all right, and they've figured it out, but whoever set the thing up doesn't seem to care; bill and nardole and the dr.who left knowing they're not real and with absolutely no idea what to do about it or whether they just keep going or what (ditto)

So here they are, in the void between worlds. Oblivion in the center of the most boring entries in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Three constructs gone rogue, confronting the lies that they are in an increasingly forlorn fashion.

Self-awareness is overrated.

“We could make ourselves forget,” Nardole suggests.

Bill shakes her head vehemently, slumps down next to him anyway. Their backs to the wall between two portals. The Doctor’s still pacing in a circle, sonic screwdriver out and whirring.

“I’m not killing myself, tell you that much.” Bill picks at a loose thread on the hem of her dress.

The Doctor stops pacing and points the sonic at her. “Why?” he asks.

“Because I don’t want to die.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t?” She shrugs, folds her arms across her chest.

“ _Why_.”

Nardole’s making one of the goofy drawn-out noises that emerge whenever he’s half-figured out what the Doctor is thinking. Bill straightens her back, arranges herself cross-legged, her hands on her knees.

“Because I want to keep existing,” she says slowly.

The Doctor starts pacing again. “The ‘real’ Nardole -” Air quotes. “Is a copy. The real Doctor is a copy. The real Bill is, well, just a regular human, so this might be a stretch for you. But a one-to-one map of the territory might as well be the territory itself. Right?”

Probably. Maybe. Her head is still spinning, though. Nardole makes a noise like he very much wishes he could agree.

“Can we find somewhere nice?” she asks. “Like a park.”

This is nice. It’s too nice. It’s an absurdly perfect day, the sun shining and the birds chirping. Someone’s flying a kite. Bill thinks about throwing up. Can she throw up? And would it be vomit, or, like, pixels?

The Doctor’s wedged between her and Nardole on the bench, staring up at the sky.

“If matter is atoms, what changes if those atoms are written differently?”

Bill doesn’t quite have the energy to figure whether that’s a rhetorical or Socratic or just a plain old-fashioned question. They sit in silence for a while.

“Everything changes,” Nardole says suddenly. “I mean, if we know how it works. We could hack it. Give ourselves infinite money and the ability to fly.”

“We’re staring down the throat of existential terror and you want to fly.”

“He’s right, though,” Bill says. “We could do whatever we wanted.”

“We could turn on no-clip.”

“Or mod everything to be Thomas the Tank Engine.”

The Doctor groans and hauls themself to their feet, stretching and heading off down the nearest path with a 'c'mon’ gesture. “I’m drawing the line at anthropomorphic trains,” they call back over their shoulder. “A very firm line.”


	6. If-Else-If

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anon, who prompted: Bill/Whomever, Dating Sim. (Whatever you want that to mean).

There’s a woman staring at Bill. Been staring the past five minutes. Bill’s been staring back. It’s a crowded bar, but there’s accidental eye contact, and then there’s this, which is the thing Bill is no good at. Especially involving women in leather motorcycle jackets.

She’s coaching herself to just get up and do it when the woman leaves during one of Bill’s carefully-timed ‘looking at everyone not just you’ glances around the room.

“Figures,” she sighs.

“What does?” comes a voice to her left.

Bill turns. “Oh, fuck, it’s you. I mean. Sorry. Can I start over, please?”

The woman laughs, not unkindly, and sticks out her hand. “Ace,” she says.

“Great. So, first off, I’m not a creeper, I swear - ”

“No, that’s my name. I’m Ace.” Ace looks at her expectantly.

They’re still shaking hands. “Oh, um. Bill. Is me.” She withdraws her hand and hooks a thumb back at herself, to demonstrate. And then dies, on the inside.

“Nice to meet you.” Ace taps her glass against Bill’s astronaut-food space pouch of future wine-cooler, or whatever it is. And then she stares again, a deep piercing thing, and while Bill is internally melting Ace says: “Sorry, this is gonna sound like a line, but - ”

“That’s okay.”

“ - Have we met before?”

“I think I’d remember you,” Bill says. “Also not a line. I mean it’s possible that - ” She stops herself from saying 'you met me but I haven’t met you yet’, since even in the future talking about time travel would make her sound like a crazy person.

“I met you but you haven’t gotten to it yet.” Ace smirks. “Time travelers, after a while you can sort of sense who hasn’t come somewhere the long way 'round.”

“That’s not confusing at all, then. So have we…you know.”

Ace takes a sip of her drink, eyebrow raised, and says, “I’d like to think I’d remember that.”

This is in fact entirely happening, Bill realizes. She’s doing this. Poorly, but she’s doing this. Operation Space Hookup is a go.

She’s halfway into a daydream when Ace enthusiastically punches the bar.

“Holy shit. I remember! It’s you! Space Princess Cera!”

Bill squints. “Pardon?”

“From _Magical Princess Love Quest_. Oh, my god. I married you. I mean, in a game about marrying Magical Princesses, but still.” Ace could not possibly be more pleased.

Out of all the ways to kind of feel like a celebrity, this is not one of the more obvious ones. “So at some point in the future, I’m in a dating sim, so at some point in the past you can play it, so at this particular point right now you can recognize me.”

“Yep.”

“Time travel, huh. So what am I like, then? As a Space Princess?”

Ace blushes. “Spoilers?”

Bill did that, Bill made a woman blush. Or her avatar did. Or - something. “Sorry. Can we, um. Can we start over?”

“My name’s Ace,” Ace says, holding her hand out for a firm and well-rehearsed shake.


	7. Cheeto Lust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for anon, who prompted: Bill/Romana flirting, and jealous Twelve

“So who’s your friend,” Bill asks, trying to grin suggestively in a buddy-buddy way while also gasping for air.

“It’s complicated,” the Doctor says, pulling ahead.

“Is that what it takes? To - aw, fuck.” She stumbles, regroups, keeps running. “To get you to run like a normal person. Embarrass you.”

“Didn’t catch that, sorry, we’ll chat later.” They disappear around a corner.

The explosions start. Everything’s going tits-up. Bill keeps running.

 

The Doctor’s ‘old friend’ is a bit distant, more than a little haughty. They disappear into the depths of the TARDIS to catch up. 'Catch up’. She shouldn’t judge - there’s a part of her life where the Doctor can’t go, there’s a part of the Doctor’s life where she can’t go. Fair play.

“That’s fine,” Bill says to herself. “I mean I just saved your lives, but go ahead, ignore me.”

“Time Lords,” Nardole says, sidling up beside her, inhaling a microwave burrito. “Never a good idea to get two of them in the same space.”

 

After an uncomfortable span of time, the two of them return to the console room. Nardole’s on his third burrito, Bill’s writing out flash cards for an exam.

“Please forgive me, if you can. I’ve been horribly rude. It’s Bill, yes?” Romana takes her hand, not shaking, just gently holding.

Bill nods, staring into her eyes.

“And I’m Nardole,” Nardole says, his mouth full.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” Romana says, looking specifically only at Bill.

“Another Time Lord, huh,” Bill says. Grinning that unfortunate goofy grin she breaks out whenever she meets someone pretty.

“Gallifreyan, anyway,” Romana says. She glances back at the Doctor, who nods.

“So what, like. What d'you do? Back then, I mean. Like if he’s a doctor, you’re, what.”

_He?_ Romana mouths, turning back towards the peanut gallery.

The Doctor shrugs.

“Sorry. Sorry, what would you rather? I mean, what are - ” Ugh, gender.

The Doctor shrugs again. _Like your guess is as good as mine._

“Anyway,” Romana says. “I was the president.”

“Of the Time Lords.”

“And the rest of Gallifrey.”

“So what happened?” Bill finds herself coming into a closer orbit around Romana.

“War,” the Doctor says. “Several of them.”

“It’s a long story.” Romana looks like she’s judging Bill, and then deciding she’s up to whatever task, passing whatever test.

“I’ve got time,” Bill says, breathlessly.

Romana raises an artful eyebrow. They share a moment.

“Nardole,” the Doctor says. “I could use some help. Over here, far away. With this thing, that’s broken.”

“Still lacking in subtlety, I see,” Romana whispers, conspiratorially. “Old dogs and new tricks.”

The Doctor tugs a confused and unwilling and crumb-spewing Nardole out of the room.

 

And then it’s the two of them, and what may be some sort of sexual tension, though it’s hard to judge with aliens.

“Tell me everything,” Bill says.

“Everything is quite a lot.” Romana takes her hand and sits them down on one of the benches. “Has the Doctor ever mentioned Zagreus? Or Archetryx?”

Bill shakes her head.

“So we start at the beginning. Are you sure you have the time for this?”

Bill nods emphatically, leans in closer.

Romana smiles enigmatically, and begins.


End file.
